Now in its 15th year, the Green Screen En­vi­ron­men­tal Film Fes­ti­val host­ed its an­nu­al fes­ti­val event for schools in­spired by the theme "Con­nect."

"Con­nect" is a deep dive in­to the in­tri­cate and vi­tal re­la­tion­ships that bind us to our plan­et and each oth­er in our com­mu­ni­ties.

Green Screen's School Screen­ings and Green Ca­reer Talks took place on Jan­u­ary 22nd and Jan­u­ary 23rd from 9 am to noon at Queen’s Hall, Port of Spain.

This year's Green Ca­reer Speak­ers fea­tured Mr. Da­reem Jef­frey, CEO of Ecow­ash on Wednes­day 22nd Jan­u­ary, and Mr. Lawrence Ar­joon, CEO of the He­roes Foun­da­tion on Thurs­day 23rd Jan­u­ary.

28-year-old en­tre­pre­neur Jef­frey hails from the vil­lage of Moru­ga in south Trinidad and runs EcoW­ash, the Caribbean’s first wa­ter con­ser­va­tion car wash, which wash­es a ve­hi­cle us­ing on­ly 2 litres of wa­ter.

EcoW­ash’s busi­ness ap­proach in­volves re­duc­ing wa­ter wastage while pro­vid­ing youths with a pos­i­tive op­por­tu­ni­ty for em­ploy­ment. Dur­ing his talk Mr. Jef­frey urged stu­dents to “count the costs“ of achiev­ing their am­bi­tions, stat­ing “You’re look­ing for dis­tinc­tions? Count the cost. You know that you’re go­ing to have to put in those hours. Even with busi­ness. As you look to start your own green busi­ness­es.”

Ar­joon, CEO of the He­roes Foun­da­tion, stat­ed that “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty means leav­ing the world bet­ter than we found it so that the next gen­er­a­tion can thrive and sur­pass all the oth­er gen­er­a­tions that have gone be­fore.

It's about dis­rupt­ing the sta­tus quo and go­ing above and be­yond to change the un­sus­tain­able be­hav­iours and ac­tions that have cre­at­ed the prob­lems”. Stu­dents al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in a Q&A ses­sion with both speak­ers about their per­son­al and ca­reer jour­neys.

The pre­sen­ta­tion al­so fea­tured a se­ries of short films in­spired by the theme: CON­NECT" in­clud­ing fi­nal­ists from the 2024 edi­tion of the Very Short Shorts Mo­bile Film Com­pe­ti­tion, pre­sent­ed by Green Screen.

Al­so fea­tured were “Ag­ri­man Agven­tures” a lo­cal­ly pro­duced an­i­mat­ed film se­ries cre­at­ed by WHY­Farm; “Lan­mé” a short doc­u­men­tary about sea moss pro­duc­tion in St. Lu­cia dur­ing COVID and “Be­long­ing”, a short doc­u­men­tary which de­picts how a US based stu­dent pro­gram brings ur­ban stu­dents to a wilder­ness camp to learn about en­vi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, eq­ui­ty, ac­cess and in­clu­sion in na­ture and out­door spaces.